Comedy preview: Russell Brand, on tour

Even before he triggered a national moral panic, it was easy to find reasons to dislike Russell Brand. The rambunctious sex life, the associations with reality TV, the clothes: Brand's given the sceptical more than enough ammunition to damn him as a silly waste of space. Thing is, these superficial things can lead to equally superficial judgments. When you look beneath the media flim-flam, there's a first-rate stand-up. Brand's eclectic mind and helter-skelter delivery allows him to touch on topics outside the boundaries of mainstream comedy (there won't be many arena tours this year where references to Lord Byron are a nailed-on certainty), but he's always aware of his own ridiculousness - at times, painfully so. Also, since Brand's willingness to out his demons has in the past seen him deconstructing his former heroin habit, it's unlikely that he'll shy away from giving audiences his inevitably unique take on Sachsgate.